“Focusing and scaffolding work with the un sustainable development goals in english language teaching”

Abstract

This presentation will take its starting point in the usefulness of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in providing relevant and motivating content for foreign language education. Given the challenges that the complexity of the SDGs also presents to both students and teachers, I will suggest, with examples, how to select and focus aspects of the Global Goals, so they become realistic for use in the foreign language (in this case English) classroom. Following this, I will also discuss the possible nature of scaffolding work in the integration of elements from the SDGs in English teaching. The idea for the presentation grew out of a collaboration between staff and students at PNPU (Poltava) and UCC/KP (Copenhagen) in the autumn semester of 2023. This collaboration was an example of and an experiment with the implementation of a COIL project (Collaborative Online International Learning).